


fracture

by foundCarcosa



Category: Elder Scrolls
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29717325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: a confrontation between two alike but diverging souls; the beginning of the end.
Relationships: Vanus Galerion/Mannimarco
Kudos: 1





	fracture

Vanus Galerion, cold and bright. Mannimarco, fiery and dark. Like avatars they meet in the grey catacombs beneath Ceporah Tower, like figures bigger than themselves, bigger than the lanky, young, pale-skinned Altmer that they are.

Mannimarco isn’t sneering and callous yet. Mannimarco is somber-faced, sallow and gaunt. _He still doesn’t eat enough,_ Vanus thinks, but he pushes that thought from his mind. This was a confrontation; no room for remembering how he’d once thought of Mannimarco as twin, counterpart, soul-mate. No room for remembering how foolish he’d been, how he’d imagined their magic intertwining in a cosmic dance, how he’d insisted that light and dark could coexist just as they do in the heavens.

Hubris, perhaps. Or just young, insolent, impetuous desire. He wanted Mannimarco beside him, and ignored when they began drifting apart. “You think you’re better than me,” Mannimarco had accused him, and Vanus lied in his dissent, lied hard enough to believe himself.

“What now, Galerion?” Already, Mannimarco acknowledges the distance between them, for ‘Vanus’ was too familiar. He folds his arms, stands to his full height, which is not considerable though his thinness creates the illusion. “Surely this isn’t to be another impassioned plea of yours, because I’ve heard them all. I’ve even got a few passages memorised, hm, let's see… _‘Stop this foolishness, Mannimarco! Can’t you see you’re going down a dark path? Don’t you_ care?’”

“Why do you insist on being so hard-hearted about this?”

“Why do you insist on being a bleeding heart about it? What does it matter to you where I find my calling? It is mine, not yours.”

“It _matters_ because–” _No._ Vanus would not give him this one. Later, much later, and many times, Vanus would wonder if things would have been different, if only Vanus had been more straightforward, more vulnerable. If Vanus had asserted more often how much Mannimarco mattered, even more than his calling; maybe even if Vanus tried to understand what called Mannimarco in the first place.  
But even in this heartfelt regretting, Vanus knows better. What called Mannimarco to the art of death magic was something Vanus couldn’t touch. There would be no understanding.

“Necromancy is a _cancer,_ Mannimarco, a foul and insidious cancer. It rots you, the way a corpse rots; the way flesh wears away from bone is likewise how one’s integrity and goodness is worn away…”

 _“Goodness,”_ Mannimarco repeats, laughing loudly, mockingly. “Goodness! What goodness? There has never _been_ goodness in me, Vanus. You tried to shove goodness in where there is no room for it. You tried to make me like you are. Or, hm… like you _think_ you are.”

Vanus stares at Mannimarco’s face, twisted in derision. “Like I _think_ I am.”

“Surely. You _think_ you’re all goodness, all light, guided by the Aedra themselves, blah blah blah, but you’re no different from me. What _is_ different between us is that I acknowledge what you choose to ignore.”

“It’s a _choice,_ Mannimarco! You choose this dark path, while I choose the other! You can choose differently!”

“So can you,” Mannimarco shrugs, inspecting his nails with a pointed indifference.

Vanus scoffs. “Why would I?”

“Funny– I could ask the same of you.”

“Because one is obviously, patently wrong!” The frustration constricts Vanus' voice and curls his fists, makes him sound petulant, makes him look like a child throwing a tantrum. He wants to collect himself, he wants to be _reasonable,_ but his former companion's easy contempt is disarming. Hadn't he known it would be so?

Mannimarco grins, sourly. “There it is. Self-righteousness. The favoured tool of goodness and light, yes?”

“You are incorrigible!” Vanus throws his hands up in the air in abject frustration, feeling control slip away from him, feeling the battle being lost before he’s done with it.  
A tiny voice tries to make itself heard – _what if Mannimarco has a point?_ – and Vanus squashes it with a hurt viciousness that stuns even him.  
Vanus would be a few years shy of death before he entertains that voice again, too late to make a difference.

“I’m done with you,” Vanus seethes instead, curled around his wounded heart like a feral cat, snarling at Mannimarco who only lifts a shoulder in a lazy, mocking shrug. “Done! Next time I see you, I _will_ destroy you. And then we shall see who is right.”

Mannimarco laughs, sinking his fingers into his wounded heart and hardening it, a cruel-eyed alchemist turning gold into lead. Gold was more precious, more beautiful -- but lead more useful, more enduring.  
Vanus could keep his gold. He would die with it, and Mannimarco would live on.

“We shall see.”


End file.
